5 Steps to Your Rebranding Strategy

Author: Kaitlyn Partington Category: Branding Date: February 22, 2019

You built your business 5, 10 or 15+ years ago and since then you have grown, whether that be in terms of the number of employees, annual revenue, or service offerings. Now it may seem as though your brand, logo, color scheme, maybe even your company name no longer reflect what your business has become or what it stands for. It may be time to consider rebranding your business, presenting a new look that more clearly identifies who you are to customers and prospects and what your business is. Deciding to revamp your brand can be overwhelming, but we have a five-step guide to develop and execute your rebranding strategy:

1. Understand Your Target Audience

The first step in the rebranding process is to make sure you have a firm understanding of your primary and secondary target audiences, so that you can design with them in mind. Your brand represents your company’s personality and is your audience’s very first impression of your business. For example, Harley Davidson owners are adventurous, freedom-loving individuals, so the company’s primary color is orange, which tends to evoke feelings of confidence and a rugged style that reflects the same “personality” as its riders. As with almost every business decision, your rebranding strategy is centered around your customer and should focus on developing a look that they can connect to and remember.

2. Consider Your Colors

Now that you understand your target audience and their style, it is time to start thinking about your color scheme. According to CCICOLOR – Institute for Color Research, people make a subconscious judgement about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing. Between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone.¹ A strong rebranding strategy will consider not only the way a color looks for your brand, but also the way it feels. Colors evoke certain emotions – yellow is optimistic and warm, red is bold and exciting, purple is creative and imaginative, blue is dependable and strong, green is peaceful and growing and black and gray are calm and balanced. The way a person reacts to your business’s color and the appropriateness of that emotion in relation to your business are more important than the color itself.

3. Develop Your Brand Identity

Now here comes the part you are probably most eager about – redesigning your logo. Your company’s logo is your most valuable visual asset and it can play a large role in the success of your rebranding strategy. The most effective logos are simple, memorable, appropriate, versatile and timeless. A logo should help you stand out from your competition and differentiate you from the crowd. The typeface that you use, the flow of the design and the imagery within logo should all work together to stand as a single representative symbol for your core business values.

When rebranding a business and establishing your new brand identity, you also need to think about the marketing and communication vehicles that you will be using and ensure that your logo has the versatility to work across all of your channels. Your logo should look presentable and effective on a 48-foot billboard and a 800 x 800px Facebook profile picture. You should also consider what your logo looks like on both dark and light backgrounds, because your logo’s colors may need to be adjusted based on your design materials that you will use as part of your rebranding strategy. However, you must ensure that on both dark and light backgrounds, that your logo still has a consistent look and feel.

4. Launch Your Rebranding Strategy Through Strategic Marketing

After you’ve determined your colors and developed your logo, it is time to start thinking about your rebrand implementation plan. You have taken the time to create a new look for your company and you may be so excited that you just want to tell the world. Let’s harness that excitement in… just for a moment. When unveiling your new brand, you want to be strategic about your announcement. Start asking yourself:

• Does my website reflect my new brand?
• Do I have updated social media cover images and profile photos?
• Do I have marketing collaterals (business cards, letterhead, envelopes) that reflect my new brand?
• Do I have an updated newsletter format?
• Do I have ongoing advertisements online or in publications that I can update with my rebranded look?

You want to consider every marketing piece you use when preparing your rebrand launch strategy so you can, as seamlessly as possible, switch over to your new brand identity across all channels at the same time. It can confuse your audience when you have inconsistent branding so try to coordinate the branding changes as closely as you can.

Preparation is key to a successful rebranding, and by reviewing rebranding case studies and developing a strategy for presenting your new look, you can draw more attention and awareness to your business during the launch. Once you have properly planned and prepared, you can now unleash that excitement and unveil your brand!

5. Be Consistent in Your Rebranding Strategy Execution

The hardest part is over, you have launched your new brand. However, rebranding your company does not stop after your launch. Your look and feel should be consistent from the day you launch your rebranding strategy. You now have to leverage that brand and make it recognizable in your marketplace. Each time a customer or prospect receives a touch from your business, they should be immersed in the same design experience. And, that design experience should also reflect the way individuals interact with your business.

Developing a rebranding strategy can be complicated, yet very exciting. If you are looking to revamp your identity, reach out to us and find out how we can help you take your brand to the next level.

^{1. CICICOLOR – Institute for Color Research: https://www.colorcom.com/research/why-color-matters}